CRASH sequel to Die Trying
by G.E Waldo
Summary: By GeeLady Summary: New relationship. Vacation. Car trip. Remote highway. Fate. Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language. Pairing: House/Wilson. Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earn
1. Chapter 1

CRASH

(Sequel to Die Trying)

PART I

By GeeLady

Summary: New relationship. Vacation. Car trip. Remote highway. Fate.

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Yup, another car crash story. Someone suggested Wilson ought to suffer emotionally at the possibility of losing House and I thought - _**Yeah!**_ So I decided to give it a go.

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"I'll be gone for two weeks." Wilson explained to Lisa Cuddy, Dean of Medicine and his boss at Princeton Plainsborough Hospital. "Morrison is taking my patients until I get back. I'll be out of cell' phone range . . .it's, um, a wilderness trip." Wilson stammered which made him feel rather stupid since it wasn't Cuddys' business who he was going. "Uh, I'll call when I get there so you'll know where I am." Without giving Cuddy a chance to respond or even say goodbye, Wilson quickly said, "Bye for now." and hung up. He felt a hot blush rise to his ears.

There was no reason to feel nervous or ashamed or afraid. It was a wilderness trip. Driving through the wilderness to a cushy hotel by a lake is a normal thing to do.

A usual activity. Usual enough not to feel weird about it.

But it would be his first trip anywhere with House since things between them had changed. That wasn't usual and Wilson was nervous about spending such an extended time in Houses' presence. It wasn't normal or usual for them. Not for a long time.

Amber had died over a year ago and - Wilson remembered with shame - after he had stopped being a completely ungrateful ass to House, House, with more patience than Wilson ever thought him capable of, had gently prodded their new relationship in a different direction. To a place Wilson had not been certain he wanted to go at first. But once they had crossed the line from friends to lovers, it had started to feel . . .natural. Like this was what was supposed to happen. This was what should have been happening years ago.

House had said he loved Wilson and Wilson had finally got it in his head specifically how. House had sealed the meaning with a spontaneous kiss one night five months previous. It had taken Wilson by surprise. Right there on Houses' couch by the newly repaired Flying V guitar - a setting so House flavored Wilson had not run or even flinched. He had not disliked the kiss either.

What had stirred then, roared now. He loved House. A specific love.

Wilson felt the lump in his throat when he also remembered how close he had come to losing House forever. He remembered a lot of things he felt shame for. Now he hoped to build a lot of things to feel proud over. Loving House with all his heart topped the list. Making sure House knew he loved him held second spot.

As sure as Wilson was about his love for House, he was as uncertain about the trip. their short stint of sharing an apartment had been . . .interesting. But also had drove him nuts. House was not an easy man to live with.

But in a hotel, others would clean up. Others would cook. Others would fold towels and take orders for food and drink. All Wilson had to do was spend time with House, laughing and learning about each other. And making love. house was probably right. Living together - that huge step - was too big for right now. This was easier. This was the Ready! Set! before any movement. Poised on life. Starting again, Wilson decided, wasn't bad at all.

In contrast to Wilsons' worry and bitten fingernails, House was as calm as a beaver dammed river as he slipped into the car beside Wilson. Wilson did a U-turn, steering the vehicle west.

XXX

Cuddy's new assistant had finally caught up on her new bosses' filing and was nervously straightening her desk and pacing the small outer office. Lisa Cuddy was a nice woman but demanding too. She wanted things done fast and right. A Dean of a huge teaching hospital had no time for slowness or slackers.

So Miranda smoothed her skirt and entered her bosses' deserted office, intending to straighten out Cuddy's desk and ready things for the long day ahead.

Doctor Cuddys' phone was lit up. A tiny red flashing light indicated messages were waiting. Miranda thought she'd just jot them down and save her boss the trouble. Having extra time to enjoy her morning coffee would put Doctor Cuddy in a good mood.

Miranda reached out, and in her haste to be efficient, hit the incorrect two button sequence that immediately erased every message.

"Oh _shit_!"

XXX

"Any problems?" Wilson asked.

House looked at him with question mark eyes. "Pruh-problems?"

Houses' stutter had improved over time due to his own ingeniously invented, self-taught method.

House sang aloud. Most of time he practiced at home but sometimes in his office too. He sang all sorts of music and used varying voice styles. "A su-sing-singing brain duh-duh-doesn't sta-sta-sta-stutter." House had explained to his staffs' collectively raised eyebrows.

If anyone had doubts, they were soon re-educated on what the method entailed. House wasn't just singing, he was singing with a goal to _not sing_ while singing. "I'll stu-stu-start wu-with ra-ra-regular full tonal songs, a-a-and mu-mu-move to su-sim-simpler, less demanding tah-tah-tones. Ev-ev-event-eventu-tually it-it-it'll bu-be Ru-Rap - nu-no mu-mus-musical tu-tu-tones at all. Then Ru-rap wu-wu-without the ruh-ruh-rhythm."

Everyone was flabbergasted at the idea. Kutner told House he ought to publish an article expounding the idea. It might be adopted and used as a method for re-training the brain to speak-sing. "So the mind still thinks it's singing when it's not." Kutner had said, excited about the idea. "You could even call it that." He had suggested. "_Speak-Singing for the Stuttering Brain_."

House had called Kutners' suggested title "As luh-lame-ass as wu-Wilsons' pu-paying uh-uh-off a pu-patient cause he _duh-didn't_ die."

It was several months before anyone saw an improvement, but it was there. House practiced daily and Wilson encouraged it whole-heartedly. Even Hadley, not a House fan by any means had commented: "Well, at least he has the pipes for it."

"Problems. You know, with the team." Wilson asked. "Any problems with the team?"

"Why wu-would there bu-be a puh-problem? I ta-told them I wu-was going ah-ah, I was g-going on vu-vay-vacation. It's none o-of their bu-business whu-where or w-with who."

"So . . . no one - not even Cameron - asked?"

"Sh-sure. A-and I said it wu-was none of her b-bu-bu, none o-of her business."

"What about Cuddy? I told her-"

"I knu-know what y-y-you t-told her. Yu-yu-you shook like a lu-lu-little girl wi-with a sta-sta-stolen lah-lollipop and lied thru-through your t-ten th-thou-thousand dollar cap-j-job."

"My teeth are not capped and I didn't lie. I just didn't tell her I was going with you."

"I did."

Wilson fought the wheel for a few seconds when the car swerved over the line. "What??"

"Why ah-all this lah-lying? You ash-ash-ashamed to be slu-slu-sleeping wu-with me?"

"No. I just . . .think it might be wiser to break the news at the right time."

"It's bruh-broken. I lu-left Cuddy a muh-message. I ah-ah-included some suh-suh-sex noises so sh-she'd get the fuh-full picture. And wu-when is "the ruh-right t-time"? We've bu-been fu-fu-fucking like hyenas fu-for four mu-months. Ya-you wu-weren't even with Am-Amber-" House suddenly stopped, looking contrite over the slip-up. "Suh-sorry."

"Don't worry about it." Wilson still felt a tiny pang whenever he thought of Amber but he was too excited about being with House and the trip to let it darken his mood. "Like the new wheels?" He asked his passenger.

House gave the upholstered surroundings an abstract once-over with disinterested eyes. "It's nah-nice."

"Nice? _Nice? _It's a nineteen sixty-four Dodge 330 Super Stock Two-Door Sedan."

"Oh-okay."

Wilson wasn't sure if that was a stutter or not. "It's got forty-seven thousand original miles. Leather upholstery, captain's chairs, CD surround sound, a hemispherical combustion chamber. The most powerful V-8 for its time - a 426-cubic-inch _**bruiser**_ good for up to 425 publicly acceptable horsepower. Teenage boys come when they see it."

"An-an-and I s-said it's nice."

Wilson sighed heavily. "You are so hard to please."

"A-are you on cu-crack?"

"What?"

"Sc-sc-scoobie snacks? D-did th-tha-that cute lit-little n-nurse from Emerg' suh-send you sp-special ba-brow-brownies?"

"You're insane House."

"S-so she did?"

"I bought this car for our trip. Just for this trip."

"You mu-mean yu-yu-you're ta-taking it back aft-t-t-ter?"

"No. I mean I wanted this, our first road trip ever, to be special."

"Du-du-don't bu-buy me ma-mattres-ttreses."

"You _are_ insane."

"This tru-trip i-is alre-ready sp-sp-special. In fuh-fact, es-es-_especially_ spuh-special. Nuh-know why? 'Cause it's wu-with _me."_

Suddenly Wilson wanted to kiss him! But they were entering an especially twisting and ascending section of wild wood road and the highway before him begged his full attention. Oregon in the spring was an almost perfect thing. Nothing better to be had but that he and House, though not yet living together as Wilson wanted, were within the honeymoon phase of their new relationship and that _was_ perfect.

House wasn't ready to do "the buh-bed buddy thuh-thing", as he called it, yet.

House was all over with nerves or still buried under the Stacey leaving bit - or shy with worry that it would be ruining an already good thing. Or it was fear of hurt. Wilson guessed the last was most likely.

But he wanted to kiss him so badly.

XXX

No one could have foreseen the events about to transpire on such a remote, quiet highway baking under the sunshine, the rising mirage ahead telling pictures of a ghostly lake in wave after wave of heat.

Neither the driver of the six ton Cab-over rig hauling sixty-thousand pounds of pipe nor the happy doctor in the baseball hat driving the very special '64 Dodge Super Stock could have seen that in exactly one minute, eleven seconds their trails were about to intertwine and change their lives.

Drastically.

Tall Teddy, a long thin man of fifty-three and a long-haul veteran of every highway in the western States for the last thirty-one years, was tired. His eight hours without scheduled break had come and gone five hours ago. It wasn't recommended to drive that long without a good, long rest and a meal. Hell, it wasn't even legal, but every driver knew other drivers did it and every driving company all knew some of their drivers practiced it. "Pattern Logging" was an unspoken but sometimes useful trick of the trade.

So Tall Teddy sipped his insulated mug of coffee, no sugar, heavy on the cream and cranked the tunes up. With his left hand, he cracked the window for some fresh mountain air. Breathing deeply, he shook his foggy senses and glued his eyes on the rapidly advancing road. A few deep breaths, some coffee, Randy Travis and just two more hours before he would sleep.

Wilson heard Houses' compliment in typical House language. Wilson went over it in his mind. House says something terrific about himself. Or he sarcastically makes a remark about someone's elses' hair or clothes or insufferable sentimentality but doesn't directly and outright insult them. _That _was a House compliment. Wilson had come to store such sweet House nothings in his heart for future reference because he heard them so infrequently.

Like the time House had said, in reference to the green tie he was wearing that ex-wife Bonnie had bought him and he hadn't the heart to throw away, "I suppose if that ugly thing has to hang around here, it may as well hang _there_."

A House compliment. To anyone else: words from a simple jerk! To Wilson: Simple words from a jerk. What Wilson had heard was "It only looks good on _you_."

_I love this man._

_-_

_-_

It wasn't long before the radio faded into white noise and the air rushing in his window became an irritant to the eye rather than a stimulant to his tired brain. The steering wheel, set free under sleeping hands, rotated counter-clockwise and seventy-five thousand pounds of steel and glass drifted into the oncoming lane under the early morning sun.

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-

Wilson decided - yes it was time for spontaneity - leaned across the seat, cupped the back of Houses' head in his right hand and kissed him hard on the mouth.

He turned his eyes back to the calm , empty highway and smiled at what he knew would be Houses' look surprise and maybe even if he was lucky, shy smile.

Wilson was pleased.

Until he rounded a corner and came face to face with a huge moving obstacle bearing down on him at sixty miles an hour.

By cranking the wheel crazily ro the right, he just managed to avoid a head-on. Time slowed. He spun the steering wheel hard and turned his head to look at House for what he believed would be the last time on earth. House was still looking down shyly, his attention on something pleasant behind his eyes and not on the impending crash about to happen with the huge truck or his life about to flash before him and then stop. The end to everything he knew was upon him - a brief flash for both of them in a cold, careless world.

_Thank God_. That's all Wilson had time to think. Silently those two words arose in his mind.

In regards to House, Wilson thought _Thank God_.

Thank God House had not seen the truck and did not know he was about to die. He would not know it when death arrived to claim him in its merciless hands. He would be taken from life without losing the simple joy he felt in his heart at that moment.

_Thank God,_ Wilson thought. The universe owes him that much.

-

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-

But neither of the two men in the Doge Stock 350 died.

The driver's rear end slammed into the trucks' grill and was spun twice then flipped over until it landed back on its summer tread radials. It skidded off the road and down a sharp embankment, the first two hundred yards thick with deciduous brush covered in June berries, the last three hundred yards of the terrifically steep drop was thick with altitude stunted pine forest.

Wilsons' car, nearly split in two, careened by an outside will for a gap in the thicker, older trees at the bottom, bursting through them in a sickening crunch of groaning metal and snapping limbs. Wilson, thrown around as relativity would allow within the confines of his seatbelt - at least they'd both had the sense to wear them - no longer could control anything his prize car did.

He tasted blood from having bitten his tongue but managed a quick look over to House who flopped bonelessly around like a rag doll but still strapped in.

The Doge Stock Bruiser came to rest on its roof, the dull grey metal of its underside in fashion against the rocks of the creek bed not four feet from the crushed passenger door. The engine choked and died.

Licking bloody lips, Wilson thought in his banged up head - _No engine, no fire._ _Probably a good thing_.

-

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-

Up above, in the space of time just seconds short of Wilson and Houses' plunge into the abyss, the sleeping driver of the pipe-laden rig continued down the road - the heavy bump he had felt against his heavy duty "Deer Killer" front grill jolting him awake from his pleasant but dangerous micro-nap. He straightened the wheel and cursed the pothole his tire must have hit, thanked his lucky stars he had not encountered any traffic while sleep-driving on the wrong side of the highway on the remote, infrequently traveled area.

The sun sparkled on the dew-dampened black-top. Tall Teddy cranked up the radio when Johnny Cash began to sing.

_"I fell into a burning ring of fire . . . "_

XXX

The first thing of which Wilson became aware was the stink of gasoline over and above that of the crisp background odor of fresh mountain air.

The ugly hiss of escaping radiator fluid and cracked engine block was ugly white noise over the gurgling notes of a nearby stream bed.

The next thing he heard was the real music to his ears - a soft groan from Houses' throat followed by a cough. To Wilsons' physician mind, that meant House was breathing regularly enough to take and expel a breath. A man cannot cough without breath and cannot take a breath with a blocked airway. So Houses' throat was functional - no crushed trachea and no liquid choke to alert him to a bleeding larynx.

"House?" Wilson croaked, mentally checking the state of his own limbs and sore parts before attempting to move. "Are you okay?"

"I duh-duh-don't knu-know."

"Well, don't move. Let me get to you." When Wilson stretched out his arm to feel for his friends' head, it encountered only empty air then car seat. House must be outside the car. Wilson craned his head around to see how far House had been thrown from the car, assuming that was what had happened. The passenger side door must have opened and then snapped off when his prize cars' several spectacular flips.

Wilson half crawled on his knees and half butt walked to the other side of his crushed vehicle. House was half way out of the car, his legs still inside trapping him beneath its collapsed roof. His complexion was ashen and by it Wilson suspected internal bleeding. "Don't move."

Fortunately Wilson found he could move rather well. He deduced he had suffered no serious injuries and apart from some sore muscles and a bleeding forehead, had escaped from the horrific accident relatively unscathed. He settled down on his backside beside Houses' head and upper body, the only parts visible from under the bent frame and shattered window glass. "Any glass in your eyes? Can you see all right?"

"Yu-yes."

The Dodge was resting upside-down on a forty-five degree axis. The passenger side - Houses' side - was crushed and although the car appeared settled and stable enough, there was no moving it. The only way Wilson found he could keep himself stable enough was to keep seated. To stand was to fight for footing on the loose but sharp gravel littering the steep slope. Only the last two or three feet evened out slightly where the embankment ended at a cold mountain creek bed. The water was low for this time of year but even so it appeared four feet deep where the cars' rear end had come to rest dipped beneath it. Under the cold, cold creek lay the trunk of the vehicle and their luggage. Houses' head rested no more than five feet from the water.

"Where do you feel pain?"

"I duh-don't knu-knu-know. Ev-everywhere."

Wilson knew stress made Houses' stuttering worse. "Just lie still and let me check you out."

XXX

"It's okay Miranda. It was a mistake. Just don't let it happen again." Cuddy was openly polite but privately furious.

Miranda, Lisa Cuddy's temporary assistant, had apologized profusely upon mistakenly erasing all of her boss's business phone messages from the weekend. Doctor Cuddy, Dean of Medicine, had been expecting several important calls from contributors and other important people, no less Houses' message that was to let her know where he would be on his vacation, how long he would be there and how to reach him. Wilson had also let her know he was on vacation but had been a little vague on the details. At least she had got that message. "Driving west" was all Wilson had told her, unsure of his final destination.

"Dammit." Cuddy muttered under her breath after closing the door to her inner office.

Cuddys' regular guy, and organizational miracle in Gap clothing, was on his two weeks off with girlfriend number two and the Temp' Agency had sent over Miranda, an eager to please if inexperienced Girl Friday type. That Miranda was willing to go the extra mile any time Cuddy asked was to the credit of her otherwise clumsiness and compensated somewhat for Cuddys' lost messages.

But she was two Department heads short and reaching either one would now be unlikely if an emergency arose in their respective departments. Thankfully Oncology' former director was still on staff and could be reached and Doctor Foreman, Houses' second in command, was certainly experienced enough to run the department in Houses' absence.

Briefly it occurred to her whether Doctors Wilson and House were vacationing together but if so neither had mentioned it. Cuddy sipped her low fat Latte', feeling a certain sense of comfort that it appeared to her that Wilson had repaired the rift that had opened between himself and Doctor House after Ambers' death.

Both men had undergone tremendous strain of during and after that time. Cuddy hoped, whether on holidays together or apart, she hoped they were having a hell of a good time.

XXX

From the smooth ride of his Dodge Stock Bruiser, the surrounding country with the steep slopes blanketed in living green had appeared soft, cool and welcoming. He'd had visions of running up and down on green grass like a spring lamb, all legs and energy, and lying in a peaceful alpine meadow, listening to the birds and bees. Then the wild seemed to be welcoming them with open arms.

The close, harsh introduction of the steep, rocky, unforgiving embankment exposed the folly of his romantic notions of wild wonder. Wilson, down on his sore backside and knees cut from scrambling about on sharp gravel, slapped at mosquitoes and crawling insects, trying to keep them off himself and House. The wild, up close and personal, was no sweet mistress of adventure. She was a hard, high riding bitch who had not wrapped her loving arms around him but rather had cruelly laughed at his stupidity to believe she cared a lick about him or his hurt friend.

The wilderness had not be waiting for them but was merciless and indifferent, giving itself full permission to go about its business of raking his virgin knee-caps raw and baking his skin under a close noon-day sun.

Wilson made as close an examination of House as was possible. He was pinned immobile beneath the crumpled chassis of the Dodge. This vehicle was no modern plastic and fibre molded lightweight. It was an original. A masterpiece manufactured back in the days when cars were still made out of aluminum and steel, tough iron frame and heavy chrome highlights. It had almost all of its original parts and weighed twice what any comparable new model would and there was no budging it from off of Houses' trapped thighs.

Wilson could see the dents in his friends' flesh where the half ton of car body and engine bit down hard. There was some blood where the skin had broken, but thus far, no heavy bleeds had come to light. "Other than your legs, you seem un-injured." He informed House. He himself felt stiff all over. From the multiple impacts of his body against the restraint of the seatbelt, Wilson knew. "But there's no moving you."

Wilson looked through the gap in the spindly trees the Dodge had pulverized and up the steep, rocky and brush strewn slope. The degree of incline was dizzying. "That's a seventy-seventy-five degree slope." Wilson said softly. Scaling it would be difficult if not impossible. "And I'm no mountain-goat."

Wilson had a thought and pulled his cellular phone from his pocket. Turning it on he waited with baited breath was disappointed to be disappointed. The sharp LED display along with a feminine electronic voice read and said politely: "No coverage."

"I've got to get up to the highway."

"Wu-wu-Wilson."

Wilson leaned over House, looking at him the only way that was possible from his current uncomfortable situation - upside-down. "Yeah, buddy?"

"Tru-truck drivers' have t-t-t-two-way rah-radios."

House was right. The truck that hit them could not possibly have been as damaged as they had been. It was probably parked just up the highway where the driver had managed to pull it safely over. Wilson could imagine the guy in a checkered shirt out inspecting his rig right at that moment, his hand no doubt holding the radio in his hand and already communicating his troubles with his dispatcher. The outside world was a just one perilous climb away.

Wilsons brain, while busy with images of he and House on their way to a clean, safe hospital, coffee and donuts, also managed to keep a part of itself on the situation at hand including its surroundings. Wilsons' eye fell across a high water mark on the gravelly slope nearest them, a mark two feet above where the car, and Houses' head, lay.

Wilson looked up at the blue, cloudless sky. It was okay. "House?"

House did not respond. Wilson felt his face. A bit clammy. Shocky. Shit! "House? Still with me?" At his small nod, "I'm going to climb up to that truck. Be back as soon as I can." Wilson made way to stand but feeble fingers from Houses' right hand reached out and clutched at his pant leg before he could.

House spoke very softly, his exhaustion already etched into sunburnt features. "I huh-had her hu-hu-hand."

Wilson was anxious to begin. "Huh?" He asked, considering how he was going to manage such a climb by hands and feet alone. "What? Who's hand?"

"I had hu-her hand. Tru-tru-tried to huh-huh-help her. Stuh-stuh-stop the bleeding."

The sickness of hard memory swelled inside him as Wilson realized House was speaking of Amber and the day of the bus crash. The day she died. His went reluctantly back to a year previous and experienced all over the grief for her and his shame at his treatment of House at that time.

Here once more House lay surrounded by twisted metal in a fight for his life.

Here again, was himself all but helpless watching someone he loved hurt, possibly dying. Can't you come up with anything original? Wilson wanted to ask Fate or whoever was looking down in sadistic glee.

"Tru-tru-tried t-to stah-stah-stah-stay awake . . ."

Wilson knew the stress was making Houses' stutter (a physical left-over from the extreme trauma he had undergone) worse.

Wilson covered Houses' grasping fingers with his hand. "Never mind. You did good." At the time, I was just too much on an ass to notice. Wilson kissed his forehead. "Just lie still."

"Legs hu-hurt."

"I know." Houses' Vicodin was in his luggage which was in the cars trunk which was lying in three feet of icy mountain stream where the Dodges' rear end had come to rest. Inaccessible. "Just stay still and I'll be back before you can count to three or call me moron."

House felt Wilsons' pant leg pull away from his fingers, felt his comfortable shadow disappear and heard his shoes scraping and scrambling over hard, rocky soil. "Wuh-one," He whispered. "Tu-two, three - Muh-_moron_."

XXX

Part II ASAP!


	2. Chapter 2

CRASH

(Sequel to Die Trying)

PART II

By GeeLady

Summary: New relationship. Vacation. Car trip. Remote highway. Fate.

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Someone suggested Wilson ought to suffer emotionally at the possibility of losing House and I thought - _**Yeah!**_

The places mentioned in this story are real but I have taken liberties with some details.

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The smaller, loose rocks rolled beneath his bleeding fingers like marbles. Those that stubbornly clung to the shale formation cut and nicked his palms as he inched his way up the precariously steep incline.

A seventy-five degree slope at least, Wilson figured. Maybe steeper. He'd shed his shoes two dozen yards ago, the smooth leather soles useless against the ever shifting surface. His bare feet searched by feel for sturdy inches and made for better grip on the jumbles of rock and dirt. By the slickness between his toes, he was bleeding down there too. The terrain was uncaring about the flesh of the fragile human attempting to traverse it. Dangerous rock walls didn't feel sympathy.

After an hour of struggle, Wilson figured he was about half way to the top and sweat was pouring off him even though the light and heat of the day was fading fast. By the orange-pink in the sky above, he knew he would be climbing the last quarter distance in the dark. It came to him that being seen on the highway once he managed to reach it might be better suited to the day. Wilson cursed himself for delaying so long in his attempt to make it to the highway. But he had been too worried, and too in shock from the crash (he allowed himself that much excuse) to chance leaving House.

What if House died while he was gone? What if a hungry wolf or bear wandered by while House lay trapped, a nice tasty meal for any carnivore? What if-

A hundred possibilities, all bad, crossed his mind as he inched ever upward. Wilson drove the worst scenarios from his mind and instead concentrated on finding for his hands and toes relatively secure square inches.

Flagging down a car in the dark would be chancy, if one even happened by. And if one did, would it stop? It was almost dark, the highway wasn't a popular one. It was remote and infrequently traveled - particularly at night. He wished he had considered all of that before veering off the main highway onto the prettier but more deadly mountain road. Wilson accepted that his skills as a physician vastly outweighed his skills as an outdoors-man. In that department he had hardly ventured beyond "camping" trips to his parents cabin up in Augusta when he was a kid.

Wilson stopped to rest his aching arms and legs. The muscles in both trembled from the huge workout into which they had been suddenly recruited. He stole a glance down and immediately regretted it. Not only the dizziness caused him to almost lose his tenuous grip on the rock but that, in the gathering dark, he could no see the bottom of the ravine. He had no idea where the car and House were. Since he had only veered off a straight up course by mere feet, they would still be almost directly below him but that he was blind to them sent a chill of fear through his tired body.

The adrenaline that came with the fear though spurred him onward through the rapidly falling darkness. Here in the high mountains, nighttime teased for hours. First with orange shafts of light across the sky, splitting the clouds into long shafts of white - like sheets hanging on a line. Then the red cast would join its brother and mix it up a bit, jerking around with him, the sun dipping behind one mountain, reappearing for a while before slipping into another peaks' shadow. For hours the light had played hide and seek with his nerves.

Finally it dipped below the jagged horizon, seeming to vanish like a disobedient child. In minutes, Wilson was enclosed in darkness. He was twenty seventy feet or so from the top when he heard the first clap of thunder and felt the tiny drops of rain. Here, the weather teased as well. First the water was cool on his heated and sweaty face, but the air was quickly chilling and he knew very shortly the real stuff would be coming down on him. When it did, the sky just seemed to open up and he was soaked in under a minute. The rain sounded like laughter, pelting him cruelly.

Soon his clothes were plastered to him and he scrambled faster, as fast as he dared, before the rock wall became a slippery, treacherous mountain slide, too wet to hope for a finger hold anywhere on it.

In his haste to reach the top, his fingers and toes were scraped raw, tiny cuts making the surface even slicker. But, at last, when he reached out a panicked hand it found not slope but air. He hooked one arm over the top, feeling a highways' shoulder - loose gravel - and beneath it, the edge of rough ashphalt.

Wilson heaved and rolled the rest of his body onto the blessed horizontal earth and lay still for a moment, letting the rain wash over his cuts and burning fingers. He praised whatever arbitrary gods that existed for hearing his pathetic human hope. Shaking with fatigue, he let his heart slow for a few moments.

The rain pounding down on his face was a physical hypnosis and he closed his eyes. It wasn't a smart thing to do but he just needed a moment. It would be so easy to lie there just for a little while and rest. If he tried hard, his brain imagined the rain wasn't really a miserable downpour on a mountain side but cool ocean mist off the San Francisco coast. And the hard ashphalt wasn't a lonely highway in the dead of a September night but a wood reclining chair on a veranda overlooking a rough beach filled with the sounds of gulls and breaking surf.

Wilson awoke with a start, his heart hammering in his rib cage.

How long had he been asleep? His wristwatch' LED display said it was just passed ten PM. But he didn't know precisely what time he had left House. He thought he had climbed for about ans hour and a half. In this area of the world at this time of year, the sun set about eight-forty and he had started out just under an hour, he estimated, before sunset. So he had been asleep roughly twenty minutes.

Wilson sat up, wiped the water from his face and shook it from his hair. Both were quickly re-soaked by the relentless rain. The awful anger of the first downpour had eased somewhat, so it wasn't coming down in hard sheets but it was still that awfully reliable stuff that delighted in going on and on.

Wilson rose from the pavement and stumbled at the sharp shoulder gravel cutting into the tender soles of his flesh. His feet were the feet of a city boy clothed in pricey professional footwear not that of a mountaineer who had just scaled five hundred yards of a nearly vertical cliff wall.

No trucks or cars came by.

Wilson looked up and down the road. The problem was, he had been struck and lost control on a treacherous corner at the summit of the highway. The road disappeared around a corner at one end and curved away from his vision at the other. He would need to get to a longer stretch if he hoped to flag down any passing vehicles without forcing them to stop short on the dangerous curves. But leaving the spot meant he might forget just where his own car, and his lover, lay at the bottom of the ravine.

Having nothing else to spare, Wilson slipped off his soaked jeans, slipped his underwear off, pull his jeans back up and tied the underwear to the weak branches of a bush just off the road. It was the only bit of scrub within sight. Somehow, he had managed to flip the car right over the concrete buttress while leaving the tiny shrub unharmed.

Going commando didn't bother him nearly so much as doing it in cold, wet jeans. Wilson picked his way over the shoulder rocks and down the highway. Walking on the smoother ashphalt would have been faster but he was nervous that a car might speed around the bend and not see him or even if it did, be able to swerve in time to avoid hitting him.

Several hundred yards up the highway, Wilson was heartbroken to discover he had taken the wrong direction. This corner held only more, sharper corner where the road began a slow, meandering switchback down and around some very dense forest. With the weight of disappointment and desperation he turned and walked back the thousand yards or so to where the road had dipped below the black horizon.

This was better. It was the way they had come and the highway stretch off into the darkness but at least it was relatively straight and he might be seen soon enough to flag someone down, should any vehicles actually happen along.

Ten, fifteen minutes later, Wilson was growing concerned that he might never see a car when another truck, this one a smaller five ton, rumbled up the steep grade. Wilson was thankful for the heavy slope of the road now, since it slowed heavier vehicles down by necessity, their operators having to gear down to make it up yard by groaning yard.

Wilson began to wave frantically. At least his cotton shirt was white and would show clearly in the headlights. The trucker squinted through his rain streaked windshield, pulled to the side of the road and climbed out, much to Wilsons' everlasting gratitude.

"Hey." Wilson said, running up to him. "We had an accident. My friend is trapped down there - back there - at the bottom of the ravine. We need a resc-" Wilsons topped when the man began to wave his hands in front of his own face, as though Wilson were talking too quickly. When Wilson stopped, the older man pointed to his own ears, then shook his head.

He was deaf.

Wilson was stunned for a moment, then he gestured back to the fellows' truck and made a writing motion with his left hand, as though making notes with a pen. The deaf man nodded and waved for Wilson to follow him. Wilson quickly saw there was no radio in the truck. He motioned to his ear with his hand, pretending to talk on a phone, and the fellow shook his head, pointing to his ears again. Wilson felt stupid for asking. Of course a phone would be useless to someone who could not hear the party at the other end.

Digging around in the mess on the passenger seat, the driver pulled out a small note-pad inked with phone numbers and surrounded by doodles in the margins. Wilson all but had to plant his anxious feet in one spot as the man took a moment to find a blank page. He flipped passed several pages blank on one side but those phone numbers clearly too important for the backs of those pages to be used. Wilson was all but exploding with tension and wanted to shout for the guy to hurry.

Finally, the man found a piece with one side blank. He tore it out and located a pencil, handing these to Wilson. Wilson leaned into the truck interior so the paper wouldn't get wet and found a relatively smooth place to lay the paper so he could write: "ACCIDENT! Car in Ravine near summit of Highway 567. Man trapped". Wilson felt stupid having to write the next part: "Underwear on bush to mark spot where car went down. HURRY!!"

He handed the man the note and nodded his thanks. The man evidently felt it would be best for Wilson to come with him and motioned for Wilson to climb in the passenger seat, but Wilson shook his head and took a step back. He mouthed as clearly as he could "My friend." and pointed back up the road.

The fellow understood, climbed back into his idling five ton, put the thing in gear and drove away. In minutes, Wilson was alone again on the black highway.

He hurried as fast as his painful feet would carry him back to the spot where he had left his underwear. In a panic he thought he had walked too far when he couldn't spot them. But they had simply become so waterlogged, the weight of them had pulled the feeble bush sideways, nearly laying it on the ground. But now it was difficult to impossible to see the drawers from the highway. Even a person walking in the dry daylight would probably not spot them. So a car driving passing at night in the rain? - never.

Wilson traded his white shirt for the underwear and tied the shirt so it at least hung over the buttress and lay on the black road. Rain soaked it still wasn't as visible as it would have been dry, but it was better than nothing.

Then he looked down into the ravine. He could not even see the bottom. The moon shone weakly through the heavy rain cloud that took that moment to release an extra shower of rain, turning the steady wetness into a drenching downpour once again.

Wilson suddenly had a terrible thought that had previously escaped him. The stream just feet from Houses' trapped body would be a torrent by now. Wilson stared down at the jagged rocks as they descended into the darkness below. He had to get down there right now, right fast. House could be drowning. He might already be drowned and Wilson cursed himself for not thinking about that possibility to begin with. He should never have left him there alone.

There was only one way he could think of to get down without falling all the way and that was to attempt to slide down foot by foot on his buttocks.

And pray hard all the way.

XXX

House woke up from a terrible dream about suffocating beneath the old quilt his dads' mother had made him when he was seven. His stern father made him give her a big hug and kiss for it and he put it on his bed, straightening the thing that felt like it weighed about a ton as best as his thin arms could. Night after night, during that Christmas week, he was obligated to sleep under it. Christmas being eighty degrees in the shade since his dad was stationed in New Mexico that year.

Night after night, sweating bullets, he tried to sleep under the sweltering six by six feet square of pounds and pounds of cotton and thick fleece, every morning waking up soaked with his own sweat and red eyed from the few hours he'd managed to slip in between the hours he panted and squirmed.

His mother beamed ear to ear when he made his bed every morning like his military dad had taught him. Father House even inspected the job, unfailingly making suggestions on how to improve.

House felt the suffocation of the hated blanket in the dark, wet place he now was. He opened his eyes to find trickles of water slipping in the sides of his mouth and down his esophagus, making his choke and cough up spray after spray. Nearby the water was rising and he came awake enough to comprehend that he was about to suffocate not by his grandmothers' awful quilt but by water.

XXX

Sherif Johnson was full of coffee and chicken sandwich and headed home. He put on his wide brimmed official uniform hat and walked to his county issued law enforcement pick-up. A large five ton pulled up beside him and the driver got out, walking rapidly around the front end of his half ton, gesturing.

"What the problem, sir?"

It quickly became clear the man was a deaf-mute and was anxious over something.

"You're going to have to slow down or write out what you want to say."

The man raised a finger signaling for him to wait. Johnson, his slightly thickening middle aged body still held tall waited patiently, his investigative mind curious enough that home and long abandoned bed could wait another few minutes.

The man returned with a note-pad, flipping through the pages, looking for, Sherif guessed, one in particular. He watched as the fellow checked each page one at a time. When he reached the end and all that were left were blank pages, he seemed confused.

Sherif sighed. It had been a long day with two traffic accidents in nearby Happy Camp - which was pretty much a new record - and a suspicious shooting out by Poker Flat, which turned out to be a local rancher who had shot at a wolf but almost hit the car of some tourists camping out without a permit.

The deaf driver went back to his truck and scrambled through all the scraps of papers that littered the floor of the cab, coming up with nothing. Then he walked back tot he sherif and by pantomime tried to explain what he wanted. The deaf man gestured as though gripping a steering wheel, the he used his flat hands in a tumbling one over the other motion to indicate something rolling down a hill, then he pointed back toward the way he had come.

Sherif, a sharp-minded man with twenty years of law enforcement under his belt thought he understood and nodded. Someone had driven off the highway, probably near the summit. He sighed. It was just on sunrise and too dark for an air search, if he even had the use of a helicopter. A visual from the highway could be done but was useless until there was more light and that was an hour away.

He got on his truck radio and called his deputy.

_"Um. Go ahead."_

His younger protégée sounded sleepy. Probably napping at his desk.

"Al', call over to Eureka and see if they won't give us a hand with an air search and rescue. Try Redding if they can't or won't. We might have a rollover somewhere along Greyback Overlook or maybe at the Summit."

"Then they're dead."

"Probably, but just in case."

"Ten-four."

Whoever it was would not likely have survived the crash. And if they did, it had been raining all night. The streams in those valleys fill up fast in a heavy downpour and become raging rivers in very short order. Anyone unconscious in a wreck . . drowning would be the next kind of death. Still . . .

Johnson got on the horn again to his deputy. "And tell them to hurry."

Idiot tourists.

XXX

Teddy scratched his head at the mechanics pointing an accusing finger. "What's this? That's a hell of a dent for a pothole to make, especially since pot-holes are on the road and this is two feet up on your grill."

"Hmm." Teddy feigned ignorance. Sleeping at the wheel would not look good on his companies insurance claim. "Must have hit a deer I guess. Hard to see the damn things through the Pass. Dark as hell last night. Hard rain too."

XXX

By the time he reached the bottom, the ass of his jeans was nearly torn out and his hands and feet were tormented with fresh gouges. Wilson spotted the overturned car in the dark easily enough, even if the feeble light of an overcast moon, its chrome glinted in the dark. When he reached the side where House was laying, he was horrified to find him submerged.

Lifting Houses' head up, he was relieved to see House spew out a mouthful of water and take a ragged breath. He had just gone under a moment ago. Wilson felt sick that had he hesitated up at the road or gone for help with the driver of the truck, House would have drowned for sure. He would now be dead.

"House, I'm going to have to pull you out of there right now, and it's going to hurt like hell."

House nodded weakly, beyond caring, Wilson guessed, at what happened next.

Wilson hooked his hands under Houses' armpits and prepared to pull with all his might when the body of the car suddenly shifted. Wilson stopped for a second, then felt with one hand down to where Houses' legs disappeared under the roofs' crushed frame. The hard soil had become softened somewhat by the fast running water, some of its' surface shifting and washing away, allowing Wilson to squeeze one finger in between Houses' thighs and the metal itself. Then he felt below Houses' leg in between the hard ground and his cold skin, able to wedge one finger in there as well.

"Hey, I think I can-" But Wilson dug and clawed at the soil instead of expending the effort to explain. A little more of the soil came away beneath Houses' right leg, enough that maybe . . .

The current was getting stronger as the water rose another inch. House now could not keep his upper body above the water. Wilson held onto him with one hand while he frantically dug with the other. It was now or never.

He pulled hard and House slipped out from under the car, the frame scraping at his thighs and calves all the way. Wilson wanted to shout with glee had he not needed all the capacity of his lungs to keep himself and House from floating away. "We have to swim to the other side." He said loudly above the rushing wet noise. "This embankment is too steep and the water's rising fast. It'll be-"

House took one mighty breath and screamed as the blood, nearly completely cut off for hours from his legs below the knees, rushed back into his veins with a wave of healthy agony.

Wilson realised why the scream but could not afford to give him even a moment to endure it. "Come on." Wilson held one of Houses' hands and started to swim with the other. House started to sputter and go down. When he came back up, he managed in between cries of pain, "I c-can't swu-swu-swim."

A thing House had never mentioned in the all the years he'd known him. "I'll swim for you." Though Wilson had misgivings whether he could actually carry the man across. But he had to try.

After a herculean effort, Wilson dragged himself and House up onto the opposite embankment edged with dry grass and shrubbery. He made sure House was clear of the water before giving himself a moment of luxurious rest, flopping down on his back beside him. A shy pink appeared in the eastern sky, flirting the morning. In that tiny wafer of light, Houses' complexion was grey.

They had made it to sunrise and neither were going to drown. All they needed to do now was wait for rescue.

Wilson felt he could relax just a bit. By rolling his head a little to his left, he could see that House was either sleeping or unconscious. But he was breathing regularly. They were okay for now and Wilson sighed. In as moment he would see about getting them both to some sort of sheltered area just until the light rose higher. An overhanging tree branch maybe to get out of the rain for a while.

After that, nothing was ever going to be hard again.

XXX

PART III ASAP


	3. Chapter 3

CRASH

(Sequel to Die Trying)

PART III

By GeeLady

Summary: New relationship. Vacation. Car trip. Remote highway. Fate.

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Someone suggested Wilson ought to suffer emotionally at the possibility of losing House and I thought - _**Yeah!**_

The places mentioned in this story are real but I have taken liberties with some details.

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House was sitting up now, his back against the trunk of a tall coniferous. Wilson had no idea what species but its lower branches had offered a little shelter from the rain and now the climbing heat.

Wilson had taken a small pocket knife he kept on his key chain (really, it was a pathetic little thing that mocked the name itself. Wilson only used it to clean his fingernails), and cut up both legs of Houses' jeans so he could examine Houses' injuries.

The left leg had a wedge across it an inch wide and about as deep, angry with fresh bruising, but the circulation to his left lower leg and foot appeared good. Wilson touched the tip of Houses' big toe and watched for sign of proper blood return. The small area went white with the pressure and instantly pink again when he removed his finger.

The right leg was a different matter. Already injured, the missing muscle on the right thigh had allowed the cars weight to press far deeper into the flesh and had cut off the circulation on that side to a greater extent. The area of the thigh nearest his knee was deeply bruised and his foot was pale. That meant very little circulation and that meant the danger of infection, muscle death, gangrene and a few other things Wilson didn't like to think about.

"I think we should elevate that leg." He said to House, who was sweating from the effort of merely sitting upright. House nodded and Wilson searched around nearby for a small log or rock. He found a four foot section of softly rotting timber and carried it over. Gingerly raising Houses' foot, he slid the spongy limb underneath. Gritting his teeth, House let the leg back down. It felt good.

A few moments later something began to tickle. House opened his eyes and looked. "Wu-Wilson . . ." He said.

Wilson was settling back down beside him on his left. "Hm?"

House pointed and Wilson saw what he meant. Hundreds of ants were crawling all over Houses' foot, smelling their way north. "Don't wait un-until th-they're in m-m-my pants." House remarked.

Wilson brushed them away and went through the whole exercise of removing the offending piece of wood and locating another. This time it was a bark-less, stone-hard piece that had lain in the sun for decades. No ants. No mess.

Because of its hardness, however, it was not as comfortable and House kept having to shift the leg ever so slightly, catching a quick breath each time he did, but it was better than another invasion from the wild kingdom.

Wilson kept glancing at the sky as the sun rose higher sand the heat became more and more oppressive. At least they had an abundant source of nearby water. Looking at Houses' drawn, tight face, though, he would trade it all for a shot of morphine.

The trucker should have reached help by now. What the hell was taking so long?

XXX

Sheriff Johnson sighed. no helicopter available for several hours. Every local plane and chopper were helping to fight a growing blaze two ranges over. He spoke into his radio. "Okay. We've already started a visual from the highway. Nothing so far. Tell Wells to radio me when he can. Over and out."

Sheriff drove to the summit and parked well off the highway on the rough shoulder. The side nearest the rise had plenty of room to tuck his vehicle out of the way. The other side that looked down the steep ravine, had only a narrow path of gravel before dropping off into oblivion. The edge was marked by a low concrete barrier that he had for years been nagging the county to upgrade. So far, no politician considered it a voter worthy project.

Johnson raised his binoculars to his eyes and strained to see details jump out at him from the bottom where last nights rain had turned the gentle stream into a brown, surging river. If any cars were down there, they were either overturned, and so nicely blending in with the surrounding grey rock and burst summer brush, or had washed away hours ago.

The Sherif took a walk along the edge and spotted skid marks. This could be where the car, if there was a car, went down. One of the concrete buttresses was skewed, pushed slightly out of position. Johnson toes a dirtied strip of cloth with his booted foot. A mans shirt, plastered to the shoulder and partly hidden beneath a straggly weed that had patiently pushed its way up through a crack in the pavement. He bent to look closer. The shirt was tied to the brush with its sleeves.

A deliberate act done by a human. He raised his binoculars again and very slowly and carefully picked a visual path across every rock, bush and tree below, trying to see something, anything, that appeared unnatural. If a car, then rectangular or squarish, depending on the angle on which the thing had come to rest.

He thought he saw . . .he looked again. Whatever it was was too even, the lines too clean, for it to be a large boulder or natural formation of the stream bed. He let the binoculars dangle on their strap around his neck and cupped his hands to his mouth. "ANYONE DOWN THERE!?"

There was no answer. A skitterish chipmunk chattered nearby, startled at the din.

Sherif looked at the angle of descent. Dangerous as hell. Even in the daylight with proper boots, it would be easy to lose ones footing and tumble head over heels, breaking bones and skull.

They would have to come in from a few miles down highway, where the slope was gentler and a rescue team could reach with their Gurney and other supplies.

Sheriff sighed and climbed back in his car.

XXX

Wilson heard a voice. At least he thought he did. It might have been the call of a bird or an animal. He had heard no helicopter or plane and had seen no dot in the sky to indicate any. If a search for them was on, they were looking in the wrong place. Dropping down the gully seemed to have virtually dropped them from the earth as well.

By mid-afternoon, Wilson had scooped dozens of hands of silty water for both of them. If he'd had a container of some sort he might have been able to filter some of the solids out through Houses' tee-shirt. But Wilson had sacrificed his shirt for a road marker and had gone naked above the waist since then in the sun and heat and, despite the shade from the branches, he was turning pink.

No rescue party came by the time the sun had begun to fall again. In the shelter of the valley surrounded by high slopes, night crowded in swiftly and with it the cold.

Wilson felt House shiver. He himself was already feeling the numbing effects of the high mountain chill as the light faded. He lay down beside House and wrapped his arms around him. House, in his fever, did his best to drape his left arm over Wilsons' shoulders for some shared warmth.

House was hot like someone had lit a match and struck a fire in his core. Exposure, hunger, chilling cold alternating with scorching heat and maybe now infection were taking their combined toll. "Hey." Wilson said into his ear. "You holding on?"

House nodded but turned his head toward him, letting his forehead come to rest in the crook between Wilsons' neck and shoulder.

Wilson tried to distract House - and himself - from the trembles traveling up and down Houses' body and the alarming heat radiating off his skin. "Remember the first time we met?"

House didn't answer.

"Hey, you awake?"

House mumbled. "As long a-a-as you ku-ku-keep talking i-in my ear - _yu-yes_."

Wilson smiled. That Houses' sarcasm was intact gave him some reassurance that House was holding his own. "I think I almost saw it back then. By the time you left my office I was already questioning my orientation."

"I knu-knew y-y-you played du-du-doubles r-right off."

"Bullshit."

"You su-send people tu-tu-teddy b-bears for Gu-gods' sake. Yu-you cu-cook, you bu-bu-blow-dry your hair a-a-and clu-clip and fu-file your nails."

"That doesn't mean I'm gay."

"It means yu-you're a pru-pru-peener. You're a-always su-su-so wu-worried about what pu-pu-pu-people think oo-f you - men a-and wu-women - yu-you question . . you qua-qua-question yourself bu-because you're hu-hu-hiding."

"Hiding from you?"

"Huh-hiding from _ya-you_. You tu-tu-told yoursu-self that a nu-nu-nice Jewish doctor fra-fra-fra-from a-an upscale neigh-neigh-neighborhu-hood does na-not want to sleep wu-with an old, dru-drug ad-ad-addicted a-a-atheist. Whu-what would Mu-mom and Dad th-th-think?"

Wilson drew him in closer, enjoying the feel of his warm breath against his neck. "They don't know." He wrapped his right arm around Houses' chest, hoping to still some of their mutual shivering.

"Oh. Pu-plan on-on tu-tu-telling them su-su-someday? La-like when th-they dru-drop in fu-fu-for Han-hanukka and nu-nu-notice wu-we're slsla-seeping in the suh-same bed?"

"I'll tell them."

"Sure."

"And I suppose you've called up your strict military father and announced "Guess what? My new babe is a guy."

House went quiet and Wilson couldn't tell if it was from exhaustion, cold or --

"--I du-don't call mu-my f-father an-an-and he du-doesn't call mu-me."

Wilson heard an unspoken _So shut up! _and sighed. "Sorry." He forgot that Houses' relationship with his father was at best strained. Ex-Marine pilot John House was the only man Wilson had ever encountered who could reduce House from a confident, arrogant, opinionated jerk to a quiet, shrunken, vulnerable soul. He had often wondered what had transpired between father and son over the years to spawn in House such a sad, hidden shadow of himself.

House was too exhausted to say more and it was dark.

Wilson kissed the side of his mouth. "Go to sleep."

XXX

Sheriff Johnson felt a frustration he had almost gotten used to over the years. Not enough deputies. Not enough equipment. Not enough help or money to get it. Volunteers could only do so much because their training or experience was usually so limited. He had one deputy and thus far two volunteers searching the valley on foot all equipped with two way radios and a bulky backpack each containing a small tent and sleeping bag (in case they had to wait out the night in the valley), water and rations, bandages and tape, rubbing alcohol, one splint, Tylenol, and a small srynge of morphine designed to be injected intra-muscularly. That way the victim got pain relief but there was little risk in the volunteer screwing up an intravenous injection. The pain would ease more slowly, but it would still ease.

Two men took each side of the ravine and fought their way over rocks and through wiry brush and stunted trees, trying to locate car. How the hell difficult can it be to locate a fifteen hundred pound vehicle? If they couldn't locate the car - assuming there really was one - by foot, an air search would be started next day at first light. That's as soon as a helicopter could be spared Eureka had assured him. "You're top of the list Johnson, relax." his fellow civil servant had said.

Johnson, and their undiscovered accident victims, had no choice but to wait.

XXX

Wilson spent a miserable night futilely trying to keep House warm. By morning his fever had shot up and his condition, Wilson could see, was creeping ever closer to perilous. If he had a match or a lighter, he could start a fire but neither of them were habitual smokers (although he had been surprised to see House sucking on a cigarette or two whenever he was under stress).

The stream that had become a river during the flash flood had gone down some. Wilson could see the front upside down end of his crumpled dream car sticking out of the water, the brown stuff making its ease through the broken windows. Wilson mentally kicked himself - the cigarette lighter!

He extradited himself from the tangle of Houses' sleeping arms and, careful to avoid waking him, walked to the wide stream. It had gone down but it was still a shoulder-high wade across a fast stretch of water. As his legs and torso were slowly submerged, he wondered if the cars battery, which was probably underwater as well, had any charge left in it.

Wilson stumbled out the other side and thought for a minute. He might only have one chance to start a fire, so he gathered as much dry grass and tinder sticks as he could find, piling them on a wide, flat boulder. He wasn't much of a cub scout and hoped it was enough. He remembered that, once a fire was going, you were suppose to put green leaves in it to create black smoke but he had seen that on television and wondered if it was true.

Wilson approached the car and looked in through the smashed drivers' side window. The cigaret lighter itself was above the water line and from the looks of the drying sludge line it had not been submerged at any time. That was good news. If he was lucky, the battery had escaped drowning too or, if it had not, then the receding water had given it time to dry out.

Wilson wondered if he was about to be electrocuted. He pushed the lighter in until he heard the click of a connection with the inner workings.

He waited. It didn't look like it was --

-- It popped out and he quickly grabbed it. It was glowing red. For the first time in almost two days he felt hopeful instead of just frightened. But by the time he had made it out to the small pile of sticks, the red had faded and the remaining heat was not enough to do anything but scorch a few blades of the dry grass. He would just have to be faster. He could do this!

Wilson poked his upper body back in the car, having to get down on his knees to gain access and almost lie full out to reach the lighter. From the corner of his eye he saw something bobbing in the water. A small plastic container of motor oil had escaped the rear compartment and was floating around just within reach. Wilson snatched it up and twisted off the cap. There was under half left of the dark oily substance which at that moment was like finding liquid gold.

Wilson returned to his pile of sticks and realised what a pathetically small mound it was. He poured some of the oil over the sticks and gathered more, pouring the last of the oil on that. He surveyed his work. It ought to work. The pile was large and he could always add one or two larger dried logs he'd seen nearby. He would use them as a last resort to keep it going. Although there were few trees on this side of the stream, there was enough dry brush to catch and spread a blaze up and down the valley. He knew fire could hop natural fire breaks easily with the right wind or a strong, drifting spark. He wanted rescuing but not to start the forest around them on fire.

Wilson took a small handful of grass and smeared a few drops of the oil on them. This he would take to the car.

This time, with the lighter glowing cherry red, the sticks caught almost immediately and Wilson scrambled to get it to the signal fire before it went out.

The fire caught and Wilson could almost hear the buzzing of the emergency room and could almost smell the familiar odors of antiseptic, floor cleaner and blood that permeated the world in which he worked.

They would come now.

XXX

Johnson saw the thin line of smoke trailing above the trees, spreading out with the wind. Campers or a call for help? It was pretty far from any of the regular camping sites that drew in tourists each summer and fall. But there was always some backwoods-ers who liked to rough it.

Deputy Martin was farther up the stream bank. "Martin?" Johnson called into his radio. "You see the smoke?"

A fuzzy radio voice answered, "_Ten-four. Checking it out now. It's about another quarter mile."_

Johnson watched the sky turn pale blue then pink. They had maybe a half hour before dark. "Son of a-" He pressed his lips togther impatiently. "All right. Wait for me to catch up to you. We can't do any rescuing in the dark. And take note of where that smoke line is as best you can in case it disappears."

"_Roger." _

"I'll call the others and tell them the same. We can rendezvous in the morning at that spot."

Johnsons' deputy answered. "_Over and out_."

Johnson sighed. The crash victims would have to wait another night. If they were the occupants of the car the deaf man had insisted had gone over, the smoke told him one thing. At least one of them was still alive.

XXX

Part IV ASAP.


	4. Chapter 4

CRASH

(Sequel to Die Trying)

PART IV

By GeeLady

Summary: New relationship. Vacation. Car trip. Remote highway. Fate.

Rating: M. Adult. NC-17 Slash, language.

Pairing: House/Wilson.

Disclaimer: I manipulate the sexy House and others to my hearts content. No fee's, no earnings,...just fun!

Someone suggested Wilson ought to suffer emotionally at the possibility of losing House and I thought - _**Yeah!**_

The places mentioned in this story are real but I have taken liberties with some details.

NOTE: A sharp reader - Ashily - brought it to my attention that in Chapter III, I forgot to insert Houses' stutter!! (I usually write the dialogue, then go back in and add the stutter and I simply forgot this time). It's fixed now. Much thanks to my reader for pointing that out.

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"Oh my God." Wilson said at the sight of Houses' leg. His knee was swollen to twice the size it had been the day before and purple and blue with deep bruising. Below the knee was a sharp contrast of ghostly white. He considered hoisting House on his back, providing he could actually carry him, and walking out of there.

The signal fire he had lit the evening before had gone out during the night. There had been no sign of any rescue. Not a sound. Even the buzzing insects seemed to be taking the day off, which day was already declaring itself a scorcher.

House looked bad and Wilson was unable to rouse him right away. Not until he had several times cupped as much water as his two hands could carry and bathed his forehead and chest in it. It dried quickly, leaving behind clay colored grit to fill in the lines of his face and neck.

House finally opened his eyes but he was in a high fever and didn't respond to Wilsons' words of encouragement.

Wiping at his own face, "What the hell am I going to do?" Wilson muttered to no-one but his own indecision.

In a tiny voice barely above a whisper, House answered, "Should have taken the ride home."

Wilson was startled not only by House speaking but that his stutter, in his delirium, had buried itself somewhere. "What?" Wilson leaned down and out his ear to Houses' mouth. "What did you say?"

"Should have known there was something more than the kidney damage. Should have run more tox' screens."

Wilson knew who House was speaking of and tried his best to sooth him into silence. It was all done and finished months ago. Amber was gone and he had move on -- they, House and Wilson -- had moved on. A hundred tox' screens could have been run and the offending substance might still have been missed. There were literally thousands of possibilities and tox' screens only showed what you actually tested for, not the things you didn't even _suspect_ were there. House was brilliant, but he wasn't all-knowing.

"Hey." Wilson said, "It doesn't matter. You did everything possible."

House stared at the pink-turning blue sky. "Should have stopped you."

Wilson shook his head once, trying to gather the meaning. "What--?"

"Shouldn't have transported her to Princeton. The trip as good as killed her. Shocking her would have damaged her heart but maybe saved her life. Cooling her was useless. Should have insisted."

"I _told_ you to transport her."

"I listened to you when I should have listened to my experience." House turned his head and Wilson reeled with his next words. "You were right. I wanted her gone."

Wilson swallowed the lump had risen in his throat. House was delirious. He didn't know what he was saying.

"I wanted her gone, but I did my job. I tried to save her."

Yes. That's right. In his mind, Wilson knew it was the truth and even if it wasn't, he didn't care. He wouldn't lose House. That would be too cruel. Wilson remembered the few days where House almost died trying to save her. He lost so much trying to save her. "I know, I know. You shouldn't worry about it now."

"Guess we all have to pay our debts huh?"

Wilson watched Houses' eyes flutter. He was slipping back and forth between sleep and semi-consciousness. In his touchy condition, either one was better for him.

In the distance, Wilson thought he heard another animal. But this one spoke.

A mans' voice, calling out. Calling again.

Wilson scrambled to his feet and answered as loudly as he could. "WE'RE OVER H-E-E-R-E!"

He watched as two figures approached through the shrubbery, sweaty and heavy with packs. "Am I glad to see you." Wilson felt like kissing them.

From his feet, House whispered. "You should have walked out of here."

When he looked down to deliver the good news, Houses' eyes stared up blankly, the blues of his eyes were dead waters. He was not breathing.

Wilson dropped down beside him and placed his fingers against Houses' throat. No pulse. He put one ear to Houses' chest. The heartbeat was faint. His chest did not rise. Wilson started mouth to mouth, panic ballooning in his own chest cavity, expanding to fill it and crowd out the fleeting hope he had seconds ago felt at the thought of rescue.

With the advancement of feet clad in heavy boots and a strangers' shouts of "I found them." Wilson started chest compressions.

Four months worth of memories with Amber and he had loved her deeply. She had died in his arms and for a while he thought the best part of his life was over.

The powerful motor of a helicopter closed in and Wilson breathed for House. The terrible noise of that chopper landed and idled and Wilson did nothing else but force Houses' idle heart to work and pump blood so his cells would not die. The din of his own fear drowned out everything else.

Half a lifetime of memories with House and he loved him completely. House was dying under Wilsons' own human and fallible hands that were doing everything _they_ could to save him. Even a doctors moves though sometimes were not enough. Even heart attacks, pills, risks, deep brain electrical stimulations, seizures - even all these frightening roads willingly traveled by some braver, more determined than he was, were not always enough to save a life.

What were his, Wilsons' feeble fingers on a chest, inadequate and trembling lips on a mouth, against all that? The comparison was laughable.

House wasn't just a friend or even a lover. He was a fabric woven into the days of half his adult life. Without that weave, what was there...?

Wilson breathed for House and made his heart work and work until it seemed their rescuers were taking their time -- too much time! Like a stroll through a park, they were so slow.

"Hurry up!" He screamed at them.

They finally arrived with their life saving instruments and fluids, carefully lifted House onto a hard Gurney, strapped him down and soon all four of them were in the air headed to whatever medical facility was equipped to handle a code Blue.

Wilson hoped it was very close by.

XXX

The first thing House said to him when he came around was "Yuh-you're a-an idiot."

Wilson took it in stride. With House, you took big damn strides. Lots of them. "Tough."

"You sh-sh-shouldn't have ru-risked yours-s-self."

"Why not?" Wilson was gratified to see that House couldn't think of an answer to that one.

House sighed, looking down at the limb protecting metal frame-work designed to keep the pressure off his leg, and draped with a sheet. They had cleaned him up, drained the fluid from the swelling and tried their best to restore the circulation, quickly shooting him up with morphine when he started screaming form the pain. "Duh-don't let thu-thu-them take mu-my leg."

They was still an operation to perform but any infection had to be ruled out first. Wilson crossed his arms. "You'll be fine."

"Don't pu-pu-patron-nise me! I want my luh-luh-leg."

Wilson sighed. Goddamn House as his vanity. He was frustrating, arrogant, childish pain in the ass.

And House was funny. He was brilliant and surprising and when he wanted to be, sexy in a sweetly romantic way. Wilsons' heart was tangled up in this man like a kitten with a ball of wool. "I want it too. I want all of you. You'll keep your leg."

Houses' doctor wasn't so sure. "He could lose that foot."

"That's not an option." Wilson answered and his expression defied the other doctor to argue.

He tried anyway. "Not even to save his leg?"

Wilson shook his head. "He couldn't live with that anyway. Do whatever you have to, but the lag and the foot, stay."

XXX

Once Houses' leg had been worked on surgically (he lost a portion of vein and a very small amount of muscle had to be trimmed away in the lower part of his calf) . . . "Not so much as to affect your gate too much." The surgeon explained later, "But you will, of course, need some physical therapy, to learn to walk again --"

"-- you muh-muh-mean limp ag-gain?" House corrected him.

"Well -- yes. It shouldn't take too long."

Cuddy arranged and paid for on the hospitals expense account two first class tickets home.

Wilson helped House into his apartment and to the couch. House had been at therapy for weeks and today had been a tough hour.

"I'll get us something to drink."

House nodded, sweating from the effort. He looked down at his favorite pair of jeans, one leg missing from mid-thigh down to accommodate the thick bandages on his right knee and lower leg.

Wilson brought two glasses of beer and sat beside House, draining his own quickly. House watched him fascinated with the sight of Wilson sucking back the alcohol like a man parched. "Thu-thirsty much?"

Wilson shook his head. "Horny."

House raised his eyebrows. "Wu-wu-well, don't ex-expect me ta-ta-to help you ah-out in that depart-departm-ment." He gestured down to his bandaged knee and leg. "Kuh-kuh-kind of hard tuh-to commit lah-lah-lewd acts at th-th-the moment."

"_You're_ out of commission. Not me."

House didn't know if he was up to any hanky-panky. "So, I was thin-thin-thinking about nuh-next vacatio-tion." He said to try and distract Wilson from his intimate intent. "H-how 'bout we juh-juh-just rent a ho-otel room, wuh-watch te-tel-television a-and drink scanduh-duh-lous am-mounts of alcohol a-a-and you cuh-cuh-can screw my bruh-bruh-brains out e-every n-n-ight?"

In answer Wilson leaned over and kissed Houses' lips once, then moved to his neck and shoulder. With his chin, he pushed Houses' thin tee-shirt material out of the way, and began to nibble the soft flesh stretched across his collar bone. "Sounds good. Whatever you want."

While he otherwise occupied Houses' slowly responding mouth, Wilson felt for and found the snap to Houses' jeans, popping it open. "But right now, I want something." He unzipped him.

House didn't think he and his bandaged leg would be able to do the whole in the bedroom, hot and sweaty thing. Besides, "I'm tuh-too hot." He complained. "Uh-Uh-and _you're _sweaty."

Wilson shook his head. "I don't care." He rubbed the bulge in Houses' boxers and was delighted to feel it swell and harden, loving the slow sexual assault on his all but immobilized lover. "Besides, I like you hot. And you smell good." Wilson was feeling immensely aroused but had something special in mind. He had no idea how House would react to it though.

House felt his own desire growing despite the ache in his right upper, and lower, leg. And he wanted to keep Wilson satisfied. "La-la-look, I think I muh-might, I thuh-think I cuh-can--"

But Wilson took Houses' tee-shirt in his hands and pulled it up over his head, tossing it to the floor. He started kissing his way south, down his chest, then back up to nibble a bit on Houses' right nipple.

House let Wilson find and swallow up his lips again, consuming his mouth and all protests. Suddenly Wilson stopped and drew back a little, staring House in the eyes very intently.

So intently it made House uncomfortable. "Whu_-what_?" He asked.

It had hit him in that moment. "I love you, you know."

House rolled his eyes. "If yu-you're guh-guh-going to get uh-uh-all mushy o-on me--"

But Wilson quickly captured his mouth again with a quick, soft kiss. "Quiet." He said.

House frowned. "Look, are yu-yu-you--?"

Wilson caught his lovers lips again with another supple, earnest kiss. "I said be _quiet_."

Wilson wanted something different this time. This time with a living House -- by miracle only -- sitting on his couch just like nothing at all had happened or changed; like House had _not _almost died three times in the last half year.

This time Wilson wanted House to know what it meant when someone spoke of love. For a long time, he himself had thought he understood. But House had come along, risked everything he had, and thereby thoroughly instructed him on the matter instead. House, a man with an aversion to intimacy and feelings, confession or murmurings of devotion, had lain his life on the line for what everyone had considered to be simply his obsession with the puzzle.

But who had then solved the puzzle and at a single request, risked his own life to help a woman who would only be taking what he loved away, in order to help the one he loved who was being taken.

How do you top that? How do you tell the person that you understand and want to return the favor?

Wilson very gently took Houses' face in his palms and kissed his forehead.

Houses' frown deepened. "Whu-what are you duh-doing?"

"Shut up." Wilson whispered softly again and kissed Houses' left eyebrow. Then with his thumb, he tenderly coaxed Houses' right eye closed so he could kiss that. Wilson knew what he was doing was freaking House out, but he wanted him to understand something, the very thing that had brought _him_ around to his senses after his rotten treatment of the man he was making love to right then, right there on the couch. Wilson wanted House to know, through and through, that he was loved. Not simply that _Wilson_ was in love with him, but that House was _loved_.

House was cared about. As difficult a man as House was to know, he was valued by those who did. House was worth something. He was loved for no other reason than being loved itself. It was not a thing you could put a price tag on, or a ribbon to say This is special because _I_ think it is. It, or he, was valued even if no one else recognized it.

It was the difference between being loved and being something worth loving, even if no one else advocated such.

So Wilson kissed House up and down and around and knew House wanted to run from the unusual and deeply intimate contact. Contact that was touch and tactile words made by hands that lead nowhere but to more contact and more intimacy. It would become nothing that needed to be followed by a trip to the bedroom and lead nowhere where lustful takings of one another were the expected next step.

In this nothing was required of House than to be treasured. A thing Wilson believed House had never felt about himself in his whole life.

House had known the sexual and urgent side of intimacies in his life. Wilson though could feel the fear in the restless muscles of Houses' arms that did not know what to do with this new kind of intimacy - where touch and giving and more giving was bestowed with no expectations of a return. A sort of closeness Wilson was certain House had never experienced before.

It was a state too sad to ignore though Wilson knew it was scaring the hell out of House. Wilson rightly suspected House wanted to run from it before he ran out of possible reasons why it was happening.

"Do you like this?" Wilson asked him in his ear as he kissed his neck, ran the tips of his fingers along Houses' shoulder-blades and down his back muscles.

Wilson could hear the hitch in his lovers' throat and the confusion in the erratic rhythms of his breath. "I-I du-don't . . .Whuh-whu-why uh-are you..."

"Because I love you." He said simply, teaching him that it was the only reason necessary. "That's why." He added. "That's why I'm here on the couch and that's why I talk to you when we have coffee at breakfast and come visit you at work. It's why I do . . ._anything_ with you."

He knew House didn't understand yet. Well, perhaps someday when he finally unlearned the barbs of self-loathing that people and life had so completely drilled into him, would he accept it as true.

"I love you." Wilson looked at him when he said the next words. "I don't know why. I used to think there _had_ to be a reason." _How stupid was that?_

House caught on, perhaps a little. He stretched his chin out to kiss Wilson back, no longer wanting to flee or deflect or even analyze what had just transpired. "Oh . . ."

He answered, sighing heavily, tired of sitting on the hot, leather couch.

Still a tiny frown of suspicion on his lower lip, "Thuh-thanks." House said. "Aren't yuh-you going to buh-buh-bang m-my brains ah-out now?" He then asked, puzzled that the intimacies had stopped at the kissing part.

Wilson smiled at him and stood up. "Absolutely." He went to start dinner. "When you least expect it."

"I think yuh-you got tuh-tuh-too much sa-sa-sa-sun on ya-your head out in-in the wuh-woods." House called after him but was glad at the suggestion of food. He was hungry.

Wilson pulled things from the fridge.

_Not too much, lover. _

_Just enough._

**XXX**

**END**

_**Thanks for reading. There will be no sequels to this sequel. I'm bored with it.**_

_**8)**_

_NOTE: Wounded Ways is not a one shot! There will be several chapters at least._

_Goal: The next chapter of Unidentified White Male posted by Tuesday, August 26._


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